Education to Business

North Macedonia is among the countries with the highest youth unemployment rates in Europe. In 2020, the unemployment rate for persons ages 15-24 in North Macedonia was 35%. While EU average it was 17% (Source: World Bank). Among key reasons for the high unemployment rate are the low job supply, and the long school-to-work transition. On average, the transition of young people from graduation to landing a job is 31.2 months, or 2.5 years (Source: ILO 2016). \ The lack of basic ICT skills among SMEs and business skills among students are some of the biggest bottlenecks for growth of SMEs that lead to lower employment opportunities for the youth (Source: European commission SBA Factsheet 2017). As the third connector is the lack of entrepreneurship education and lack of work related and life skill education that young people are receiving during their educational process due to the outdated educational system. On the other hand, Estonia is one the technologically most developed country in the world with renowned start up scene and digitally approachable.

The main goal was to link education to business and provide university students with tailor made opportunity for entrepreneurship education, by working on real case scenarios and at the same time contributing to the development of SMEs. The specific objectives are: - To develop a tailor made educational entrepreneurship program for university students - To improve the skills for entrepreneurship for university students - To improve the performances of 4 small and medium sized enterprises in North Macedonia - To learn new approaches in entrepreneurship through study visit of successful companies in Estonia - To develop 4 Entrepreneurship Growth Plans from students to SMEs - To raise awareness in the public about the importance of entrepreneurial education through series of online and offline activities.

During the project frame we implemented the following activities: 1. Developed educational program for entrepreneurship education 2. Selected 4 Small and medium enterprises as learning partners via open call 3. Selected 16 students from interdisciplinary studies via open call 4. Organized 4 training modules for students for increasing their capacities 5. Facilitated a mentorship process for student teams to develop Enterpreneruship Growth Plans 6. Organized a 7 day study visit in Estonia 7. Organized one dissemination event for promotion of project results.

Concrete outputs: 1. One educational program for entrepreneurship education available of LEAD webpage 2. Four Growth Entrepreneurship Plans developed by student teams for solving business challenges of the selected Results: 1. Improved entrepreneurial skills among students 2. Improved business environment among 4 selected companies 3. Improved visibility of entrepreneurial education among the public and educational proiders